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When freelancing competition becomes stupidity

  • ppscslv Level X5
    • 12

    Write the reason you're deleting this FAQ

    When freelancing competition becomes stupidity

    Here, on Seoclerks, some niches rocked in the music industry: cheap prices (starting from $1) and lots of plays. Usually who offer most plays at cheapest price ($1) he get the most customers - it's called competition in marketing books.

    But when some sellers (especially one - I'll not give his name) are trying to offer more and more plays just thinking at the money they gets in next days or weeks (not after months), then it becomes stupidity. That's because at a moment the market will be destroyed by sellers with that kind of mentality, of earning even a few cents after discounts are offered for $1 services.

    Let's take the example of SoundCloud market: 450K plays for $1? Maybe after 2 months there will be 1 million plays for $1. Also for the artists it's a dangerous offer: how could a beginner artist (like most of them are) to get 450K plays or millions of plays plus thousands of likes, comments, etc? A similar situation is encoutered at DatPiff, YouTube, Mixcrate, Mixcloud, Vimeo, Dailymotion, etc.

    At some moments the markets will crash (it happened in the past, too), and then the stupidity if some sellers will generates effects like: forbidden services, legal actions, advanced bot detection algorithms to remove fake plays/views/followers/likes, etc.

    When freelancing competition becomes stupidity

    Same situation is encoutered for SEO services: tons of spammy backlinks sold to noob buyers or resellers for $1 to $20? Thousands of websites are destroyed every year. More and more potential buyers are avoiding microjob websites, especially when they had the experience of getting their online business removed from search engines results...

    Something have to happen and I'm afraid that many sellers will be crushed by a big hammer...

    #Freelance #Competition Freelance
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    TommyCarey

    TommyCarey

    I understand when a new seller will offer a good service for a really cheap price. They're trying to build their profile, likes, reviews, followers, etc. and I'm sure in time they'll increase the prices to the normal range. People have been doing this for a long time, it's a pretty common tactic. The only problem, like you said above, the market will crash if too many services are sold and the buyer does not increase their prices. I would love to get 1,000,000 views for $1 lol, but I know that's all fake and won't do jack in terms of conversions. The only benefit is when someone else comes to your profile, page, service, etc. and sees all the positive stats such as plays, like or followers and decides to sign up because they think it's a tried and tested product.

    I've purchased plenty of services that add fake followers, likes, views and so on in order to fake a popularity level that would take me at least a year to achieve. By boosting my image a bit at the start of my websites life I can increase my conversions because people think we've been around for a while offering a fantastic service because off all the people wanting updates When freelancing competition becomes stupidity

    There's also another side to the low priced services that offer so much. Maybe they are trying to get these websites, like soundcloud, to update their algorithm and settings in order to make the website more secure. I would never do this because that would be my career down the drain. I couldn't just offer people free SEO forever and expect something good for me to come out of it.

    Some people just want to see the world burn When freelancing competition becomes stupidity
    10 years ago

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    hitmeasap

    hitmeasap

    That's competition. It's that simple. And the biggest reason for this kind of competition, the "price war" so to speak, is because you can find sellers from the whole world, on whatever marketplace you look at..

    People from India and Bangladesh for instance, have cheaper living expenses than we have in Sweden. And that basically means that I won't be able to provide the same kind of quantity as a seller from India or Bangladesh. It's just how it is. They can afford to offer dirt-cheap services and I can't do that.. It might feel unfair but the question is.. What can you do about it?

    You won't be able to provide the same services, that will lose you money in the end. So that won't happen. So what can you do?

    -You can offer something they don't offer. Add something else to the offer. Bring more to the table. Offer life-time support. Be fluent in English. Offer your clients extras for free. Offer your client a service for free of charge if they refer another client to you..

    What you have to do is to think outside the box.


    Best Regards,
    hitmeasap
    10 years ago

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    ppscslv

    ppscslv

    Related to your point of view...
    I remember the old times, when an internet connection was very poor in Bangladesh or India or Pakistan or in other similar countries, so most sellers who sell garbage today could not access main freelancing websites in the past.

    The problem that is still not identified by most freelancing websites OWNERS is that people who sell garbage will affect their websites, too... And maybe the main effect will be to push some old freelancers to build their own websites (not freelancing websites), to brand themself like any company is doing...

    What is sold today for $10, after 6 months could be sold for $1... It's not thinking outside of the box because the box can be stollen as fast as it is seen, as service, be many freelancers (usually from 3rd world, and not limited to their area). I repeat: not all sellers from 3rd world are selling garbage, some are doing a HQ work, but thier work are shadowed by thousands of sellers who sell dirty services.
    10 years ago

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    hitmeasap

    hitmeasap

    I totally agree with you, and it's a very sad scenario as we all gets affected by this. I go understand your point and I agree with you. What I meant with the "think outside the box" thing is basically that there's still buyers out there who's not interested in doing business with sellers from Pakistan, Bangladesh or India, due to communication problems for instance.

    I won't say that most of them, but at least a lot of them, have extremely poor writing skills and can't write a single sentence in English good enough to understand fully. And that's one way of thinking outside the box. If you can provide your client with good enough sentences in English, then you'll be hired instead of them.

    Especially in terms of support. You can't work with someone who's not capable of communicate with you.

    That beig said, I do agree with you and this price war should have stopped long ago.. But it never will.
    10 years ago

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    Lynne

    Lynne

    Yes Andre I agree with that. I will only buy from sellers that I can communicate well with and easily. I don't want to have difficulty understanding what is being said if I am having a problem or if I ask a question about a service and get an answer I can't quite understand.

    I don't really care where a person lives or what nationality they are but I do want to be able to communicate without any hassles.

    And yes if I am hiring someone to do my work they need to be able to read, write and converse easily in English.
    10 years ago

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    EliteWriter

    EliteWriter

    I know that it is difficult to understand how some sellers decide to charge really low prices. It is not doable for most of us who have higher expenses, and also when a seller is established he ends up having to deal with more orders and thus a limited time, so it would not be feasible to charge a really low price. Low prices also reflect poorly on quality perceptions. Having said that you cannot say such sellers who charge low prices are stupid, as it is their choice. Try to compete using other methods such as additional services, quicker turnaround times etc.
    10 years ago

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    ppscslv

    ppscslv

    With some basic knowledges about servers and networks you can sell 10 times more than sellers who sell the highest quantity for SC, YouTube, Vimeo, etc. But the problem is that you have to work more and more time to manage hundreds of orders, only to earn a few cents per order. I saw that some sellers are very happy to earn a few cents per order (waw... awesome strategy, keep going... ;)).

    In the same time more and more resellers are coming here to earn more dollars or tens of dollars with only $1 invested (and their time to search customers). Maybe instead of wasting the time with a few cents earned per order, some should found more profitable to resell $1 invested with $5, $10 $50 or even more...
    10 years ago

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    cdrocks

    cdrocks

    Yes, I know what you are talking about. However reading most sites t.o.s. different websites have certain rules in place to protect their site from getting hijacked with this kind of problem I believe. People that usually engage in this kind of behavior are not very smart business people and will usually try to copy other people's service descriptions, steal their pictures, so on and so on causing their service or services to get deleted in the end. I've messaged many buyers in the past that were using my image trademark as well as my service descriptions and would ask them to take it down. Also, location doesn't always have to do with the people that drop the prices to the lowest denominator . I am reselling to a lady from Bangladesh that has the highest prices on here lol.
    10 years ago

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    ppscslv

    ppscslv

    Be aware with that lady from Bangladesh if her username starts with "m"!!! She will ask more and more for the same $1, and when you'll refuse then she will ask refund for all orders (she's very, very insistent)...
    10 years ago

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    cdrocks

    cdrocks

    Thanks lol for the warning you sure run into some interesting people here along the way. I guess it just comes with the territory of what we do!
    10 years ago

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    Lynne

    Lynne

    I hear you and I am sure it must be a royal pain to deal with when so many people are undercutting your prices.

    BUT I am a buyer and when I see really cheap prices I just see a cheap service and I am honestly turned off.

    I take some time to find buyers I really trust and that provide great work. It takes me some time to find them but when I do I stick with them.

    Offer a great service and like has been suggested offer something unique and give your buyers a bit of individual attention.

    Here's something that does my nut in for example, make sure you say Sir to a male!

    It might sound obvious but do you know how many times I have inboxed someone here or asked a question on their profile or service and they call me Sir... do I look like a Sir? LOL

    But things like that put me off big time and like like Andre said write properly and engage properly with buyers. It will make a big difference. And you look like you do, the cheapers sellers don't.

    Yes they might get a lot of orders from buyers that are looking for cheap, but there are plenty of buyers that don't just look at price.
    10 years ago

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    Corzhens

    Corzhens

    I think that is called cut-throat competition that was discussed in college economics classes. Called such because the competitors are trying to outdo each other by lowering their prices that eventually would destroy both of them. My take on that stupidity is to ignore and endure the lack of business for a while as a bad effect but later on things will stabilize and prices will normalize.
    8 years ago

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